I've been thinking about writing this blog for a while now.

Not because I wanted revenge or because I wanted people to pick sides. Honestly, I just wanted to get this story out of my head. Looking back on it now, everything seems so obvious, but when you're actually living through it, you don't notice the red flags. You make excuses for people. You tell yourself you're overthinking. You convince yourself that someone who calls you their best friend couldn't possibly be wishing for your downfall behind your back.

Turns out... they absolutely can.

This is going to be a LOOOOOOONG ASS blog, so make yourself comfortable and get something to eat.

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For privacy reasons, everyone in this story has a fake name. NOT because they've earned my respect, but because I don't want this to become some weird public call-out post.

• My former best friend will be "Mold."
• Another former friend will be "Fungus."
• The guy who later became obsessed with me and started stalking me will be "Toenail."
• And another girl who becomes important later will be "Luisa."

This story starts back in 2021.

I had just transferred to a new school. New classmates, new teachers, new environment... basically a completely fresh start. Surprisingly, I settled in pretty quickly. I got along with most people and was actually fairly well-liked. Life wasn't perfect, but socially everything seemed to be going in the right direction.

Then I met Mold.

The funny thing is that everyone already had an opinion about her before I even knew who she was.

People constantly talked badly about her. They called her weird, annoying, dramatic... some even made fun of the way she looked. Looking back now, I understand why people didn't always enjoy being around her, but back then I thought everyone was just being cruel. Especially when they insulted her appearance. That part always bothered me.

I've never liked judging people based on rumors. I wanted to make my own opinion. So I ignored everything everyone told me.

And lowkey at first, they were wrong.

Or at least it felt like they were.

Mold and I became friends almost immediately. We had the same weird interests, the same sense of humor, spent hours playing video games together, and talked every day. It felt effortless. Like one of those friendships where you don't have to pretend to be someone else. For the first time in a while, I felt like I had someone who genuinely understood me.

Ironically, becoming friends with her made me less popular.

Some people stopped talking to me simply because I was always with Mold. Others assumed I was just like her because we were so close. I knew people judged me for it, but I didn't really care. To me, loyalty mattered more than popularity.

If everyone else wanted to believe rumors, that was their problem.

At least that's what I thought.

Looking back now, I think this was my first mistake. Not becoming friends with her...that wasn't the mistake. The mistake was believing that because everyone else judged her unfairly, every criticism about her had to be false.

Life isn't that simple.

Someone can be unfairly judged for their appearance while also treating people terribly. I didn't understand that back then. I only saw someone who seemed misunderstood.

2022 was when things slowly started falling apart.

I honestly don't even remember exactly what caused our first argument anymore. It's been years, and the details aren't really important. What I do remember is how suddenly everything changed.

One day I was her best friend.

The next day she had a new one.

She started hanging out with another girl almost all the time, and I slowly became... invisible.
She excluded me from conversations, from plans, from everything.

I remember standing there wondering what I had done wrong.

The worst part wasn't even losing the friendship. It was the timing.

At that point in my life I was already struggling mentally. I won't go into everything because that's a story for another day, but I was not okay. Having the person I trusted most suddenly leave me behind made everything feel ten times heavier.

I started questioning myself.

Was I boring?
Too annoying?
Not interesting enough?
Was there something wrong with me?

Around that same time, something unexpected happened.

I met someone else.  We'll call him Toenail.

We met during a school camp and exchanged our social media afterwards. At first he seemed genuinely funny. Easy to talk to. We mostly snapped each other, joked around, and had casual conversations. Around the same time, I also started making a few new friends, which honestly helped distract me from everything that had happened with Mold.

For a while, life actually seemed to be getting better again. Then something happened that, at the time, I completely ignored.

I had this weird feeling that Toenail liked me. I can't even explain why. It was just intuition.

Something about the way he texted.
The way he always wanted to keep conversations going.
The amount of attention he gave me.

But every single time that thought entered my head, I immediately pushed it away. I was incredibly insecure back then. I genuinely couldn't imagine someone actually having feelings for me. Whenever my brain told me, "I think he likes you," I'd immediately answer myself with, "Don't be ridiculous." Funny how insecurity can completely distort reality. It makes you doubt your own instincts. And unfortunately, my instincts had been right all along.

A few months later, Mold suddenly wanted to be friends again. I accepted it. Looking back, I think I missed her more than I wanted to admit. I was just happy to have my best friend back. Something that immediately stood out to me, though, was the way she talked about the girl she had replaced me with. She absolutely destroyed her.

She called her manipulative.
Annoying.
Ugly.
Fake.
Basically every insult you could imagine.

I listened, comforted her, and believed every word. Today I see that conversation very differently. Because years later... She would use almost the exact same words to describe me.
That's something I've learned since then.

When someone constantly has a new "worst person ever," it's worth asking yourself why every former friend somehow ends up becoming the villain in their story.

Maybe the common denominator isn't everyone else. Maybe it's them.

At the time, though, none of these thoughts crossed my mind. I was simply happy that things felt normal again. Eventually I introduced Mold to Toenail. The three of us started hanging out together. I thought I was bringing two friends together. I had absolutely no idea I was creating one of the biggest messes of my teenage years.

I wish I could say that this was the point where I finally noticed something was wrong. It wasn't. At the time, everything still felt... normal. Sure, there were moments that made me uncomfortable, but they were easy to brush off. It's amazing how much your brain is willing to excuse when you don't want to believe someone has bad intentions.

As time went on, I started talking to Toenail more and more privately. Most of our conversations happened on Snapchat. We barely talked at school compared to how much we texted online. Looking back, that's probably why everything escalated so gradually. It wasn't one huge moment where he suddenly confessed his love or became creepy overnight. It happened so slowly that I barely noticed it while it was happening.

His jokes became more flirtatious.
His compliments became more frequent.
He started giving me way more attention than anyone else.
At first I genuinely thought he was joking.

Sometimes I'd jokingly flirt back a little because I assumed we were both being sarcastic. I mean... that's just how some teenagers joke around, right?

The more time passed, the more obvious it became that he wasn't kidding. And suddenly I found myself in one of those situations where you realize someone likes you, but you have absolutely no idea how to reject them without hurting them.

I didn't like him like that.
But I also didn't want to be mean.

I hated making others feel rejected, even when I was uncomfortable myself.
So instead of setting clear boundaries, I kept hoping he'd eventually lose interest.
Spoiler alert: He didn't.

If anything, he became even more attached.

He wanted to know where I was.
Who I was talking to.
Why I didn't answer immediately.
If I replied to someone else before replying to him, he'd suddenly become cold.
If another guy talked to me, he'd get weirdly jealous.
At first I thought it was almost funny.
Then confusing.
Then exhausting.

Eventually it became genuinely scary.

The weird thing is... when people hear the word "obsessed," they usually imagine someone constantly confessing their love or writing poetry or something. Real obsession doesn't always look like that. Sometimes it's much quieter. Sometimes it's someone slowly making you feel responsible for their emotions.

Making you feel guilty for having your own life.
Making you feel like you're doing something wrong simply because you don't answer a message within five minutes. You slowly stop feeling like a friend and start feeling like you're someone's emotional support animal.

That's exactly how it felt.

Around the same time, I started noticing something else. Every time Toenail and I laughed together or texted each other, Mold would give me these weird looks. Nothing direct. Nothing she could be confronted about (like she'd ever do that anyways...). Just little facial expressions. Little comments. That kind of passive-aggressive energy where, if you point it out, the other person can immediately say, "What? I didn't do anything."

Back then I couldn't tell if I was imagining it.
Now I know I wasn't.
Things got even stranger after that.

For some reason, Toenail suddenly started trying to make me jealous. He'd intentionally give Mold more attention whenever I was around.

He'd compare us.
He'd joke with her more.
He'd almost act like he wanted me to notice.
It honestly felt like watching one of those terrible high school romance movies.
Except NOBODY had actually signed up to be in one.

The funny thing is...
I don't think Mold realized what he was doing.
Or maybe she did.
I'll probably never know.

But somewhere along the way, she developed feelings for him herself. Which made everything even messier. Soon the two of them started spending more time together. They'd whisper to each other. Laugh at things I wasn't included in. Sometimes I'd walk over and the conversation would immediately stop. You know that feeling when you don't have proof that people are talking about you...but somehow you just know?

That was me.

And Again.
I kept telling myself I was overthinking.
AGAIN.

It's almost frustrating looking back because my intuition was screaming at me, and every single time I responded with the same sentence. "I'm probably just imagining it."

I wish younger me had trusted herself more.

Eventually everything with Toenail reached a point where I genuinely couldn't handle it anymore.
People often ask why I ghosted him instead of just saying, "I'm not interested."

Why? Lowkey out of fear. 

Every boundary made him sad.
Every little bit of distance became my responsibility.
I was TIRED.
Emotionally exhausted.
So one day...
I disappeared.
I removed him.
Blocked him.
Deleted him from everything.

Looking back, was ghosting the healthiest thing to do? Probably not. But I was fifteen, overwhelmed, mentally struggling and trying to escape a situation I didn't know how to deal with.

Unfortunately...
He didn't let me leave.
Instead, things somehow became even worse.

He started stalking me.

...

I'm not going into detail in this blog because, honestly, that's an entire story by itself. All I'll say is this:

When someone refuses to accept that you no longer want contact with them, it changes the way you move through the world.

It makes you nervous.
It makes you constantly look over your shoulder.
It makes you wonder whether blocking someone actually solved anything.

Around the same time, he also started telling Mold weird things about me. I still don't know exactly what he said. Maybe half of it wasn't even true. Maybe none of it was. Either way, it pushed another wedge between us.

And just like that...
Mold and I slowly drifted apart again.
At that point, I honestly thought our friendship had simply run its course.
People change.

Friend groups change.
Teenagers are dramatic.
I assumed that was all there was to it.
If only I had known that, behind my back, another story had already been unfolding for years without me even realizing it.

The truth is, this wasn't even the worst part of the story.

The worst part was that while I thought we had simply grown apart, Mold had apparently never stopped talking about me.

I just didn't know that yet.

For most of 2023, I genuinely believed that chapter of my life was over.

Looking back now, I almost wish it had been.

By then, Mold had found another best friend. We'll call her Luisa.

The two of them were inseparable. They reminded me so much of how Mold and I used to be that it almost felt surreal. They spent all their time together, had inside jokes, shared the same interests... and honestly, I was happy for them.

Or at least I told myself I was.

I had started hanging out with other people anyway, so I figured this was just what growing up looked like. Friendships change. People move on. It happens. There wasn't any huge fight between us. No dramatic ending. We simply drifted apart.

Or so I thought.

Ironically, after some time, the three of us actually started getting closer again.

Not as best friends I guess. Just... people who happened to get along. And for a while, it was actually fun. The three of us had the same interests, laughed at the same stupid things, and I finally felt like I'd found people who understood the niche hobbies I was into.

I wanted it to work.

I really did.

But then I started noticing something.

Again.

Patterns.

The same ones I'd already experienced before.

Whenever the three of us hung out, I somehow always ended up feeling like the extra person. Plans would be made while I was standing right there. Conversations would suddenly become whispers. I'd ask what they were talking about and they'd immediately change the subject.

Little things. Things that sound insignificant when you describe them individually.

But when they happen every single day... they slowly destroy your confidence.

The worst part wasn't even being excluded. It was what happened every time I tried talking about it. I'd tell them how I felt. Not aggressively or accusing anyone. I'd simply say something like,

"Hey... I kind of feel left out sometimes."

And every single time, I'd get the exact same response.

"What do you mean?"

"You're imagining things."

"We don't exclude you."

"You're overthinking again."

Eventually I stopped bringing it up. Not because the problem disappeared. But because I genuinely started believing maybe I was the problem. Looking back now, I realize how dangerous that mindset is.

If someone hurts you, that's one thing.

But if they repeatedly convince you that the hurt never happened in the first place... you slowly stop trusting yourself. I remember constantly asking myself,

"Am I actually being excluded? Or am I just too sensitive?"

"Did they really whisper about me? Or did I imagine it?"

"Are they laughing at me? Or am I paranoid?"

When enough people dismiss your feelings over and over again, your own mind starts doing it for them. That's probably what hurt the most. By that point, my mental health was already in a really bad place.

School had become exhausting.

Getting out of bed felt exhausting.

Socializing felt exhausting.

And instead of having friends who made life easier...

I constantly felt like I had to earn my place around them.

I cried a lot during that time. Not because of one huge event, but because of hundreds of tiny ones. 

A joke here.

A whisper there.

A weird look.

Being left out again.

Having your feelings dismissed again.

It all adds up.

Eventually, we naturally drifted apart once more. This time I didn't fight it. I didn't beg anyone to stay. I was simply tired bro. There were other things happening in my life too that made everything even harder.

I'll probably write about them another time because they're separate stories.

But around the middle of 2023, I met someone who is still my best friend today.

Meeting her honestly changed my life. For the first time in years, I experienced what a healthy friendship actually felt like.

No competition.

No constant anxiety.

No wondering whether someone secretly hated me.

No feeling like I had to prove I deserved to be there.

Around the same time, though, another girl entered my life. Let's call her Fungus. At first, everything seemed great. The three of us became a friend group. (Yes...another trio. At this point I should've known better.)

Unfortunately, that friendship also became incredibly unhealthy. Without going into too much detail, Fungus mentally dragged me down even further during one of the worst periods of my life. Combined with everything else that had already happened over the past few years, it contributed to my depression becoming significantly worse.

That deserves its own blog someday. Because that's another story entirely.

By 2024, I had pretty much lost contact with both Mold and Luisa. I also had no contact by the end of 2024 with Fungus anymore. We barely spoke. Eventually I removed them from my social media. I just didn't see a reason to keep people around who clearly weren't part of my life anymore.

I thought that was the end of it.

No hard feelings or drama. Just people going separate ways. I had absolutely no idea that while I had moved on... someone else apparently hadn't. And that's probably the creepiest realization I've ever had. Because while I was busy forgetting that chapter of my life, someone else was still writing new pages.

By 2025, my life had changed so much that sometimes it didn't even feel like I was the same person anymore.

I had started my apprenticeship. 

New workplace. 

New school. 

New classmates.

New routines.

Most importantly...new people.

For the first time in years, I wasn't surrounded by constant drama.

I slowly cut contact with almost everyone from what I now jokingly call my "hell school." There are still a few people from that time that I'm friends with today, because they genuinely were good people. But almost everyone else disappeared from my life naturally.

It was lowkey one of the best things that ever happened to me. I finally had friends who actually supported each other. Friends who could joke around without constantly putting someone else down. Friends who listened when you were upset instead of telling you that you were "imagining things."

Life became peaceful. I know that sounds like such a simple word. But after years of constantly wondering who secretly disliked me, peace felt almost unreal. 

I wasn't thinking about Mold anymore.

Or Toenail.

Or any of the people from my old school.

That chapter felt closed.

Then, at the beginning of 2026, my friends and I planned to go to an anime convention together in cosplay. I was SO excited.

We spent weeks planning our costumes, talking about which characters we'd cosplay, making group chats... the whole thing. Then I had what I thought was a nice idea.

A really stupid idea.

But one that came from a genuinely good place.

I thought,

"Maybe I should invite Mold and Luisa."

Not because we were close or because I suddenly wanted to become best friends again, but because, despite everything, she had been one of the few people from my old school who shared the same interests as me. And weirdly enough... when I looked back on those years, I mostly remembered the good moments.

The late-night gaming sessions.

The inside jokes.

The conversations about random fandoms.

I had already forgotten most of the bad things.

Isn't it funny how your brain sometimes protects itself by remembering the highlights instead of the pain?

So I messaged her something simple.

Basically saying,

"Hey, I know this is random, but some friends and I are going to a convention in cosplay. If you and Luisa would like to come, you're welcome to join us."

I honestly didn't expect much. 

Maybe she'd ignore me.

Maybe she'd politely decline.

Instead... she replied almost immediately. She was incredibly friendly. Like... suspiciously friendly. She said she'd love to come. We talked for a little while, catching up after not speaking for so long. During the conversation she casually mentioned that she and Luisa weren't friends anymore. That genuinely surprised me. Back in school they had seemed inseparable. The kind of friendship where you assume they'll know each other forever.

I asked if everything was okay. She simply said they'd had a falling out. I didn't ask for details. It wasn't really my business anyways.

Or AT LEAST I thought it wasn't.

A little while later... I got a notification.

Not from Mold.

From Luisa.

At first I was confused. We hadn't talked properly in ages. Then I saw what she'd sent.

Voice messages. One after another. Each around ten minutes long.

I remember staring at my phone wondering what could possibly require thirty or forty minutes of voice messages.

I put my headphones on.

Pressed play.

And by the time I reached the end of the first one...

I honestly just sat there staring at the wall.

Because everything I thought I knew about the past completely fell apart. Luisa started apologizing almost immediately. She told me there were things I deserved to know. Things she had been feeling guilty about for a long time. Then she started telling me what had really been happening all those years.

According to her...

Mold had talked badly about me almost constantly.

Not after we stopped being friends.

Not after arguments.

Not occasionally.

Constantly. For YEARS!

While we were best friends. While we were hanging out every single day. While I genuinely believed she liked me... she was apparently telling people that I manipulated her.

That I bullied her.

That I had a "main character syndrome."

That I was annoying.

That I was fake.

That I thought I was better than everyone else.

She even constantly insulted my appearance. (Which honestly would've hurt me years earlier, but hearing that in 2026 actually made me laugh a little. Not because I'm some supermodel. I'm not. But because I had changed so much since middle school. I had grown up. I had become confident. I had my own style. I genuinely like the way I look now.)

Hearing that she had spent literal years obsessing over whether other people found me attractive felt... bizarre. 

Luisa even told me something that genuinely made my stomach drop.

Whenever people at school complimented me... Mold would apparently immediately tell Luisa that they were exaggerating. That I wasn't actually pretty. That people only said those things to be nice.

Imagine being so bothered by someone else's compliments that you feel the need to correct people. I genuinely cannot imagine living like that.

Then came the screenshots.

Lots of them.

Group chats.

Private chats.

Messages spanning years.

And there it was.

Proof.

She wasn't exaggerating. There were screenshots of Mold making fun of me, calling me names, mocking my appearance, talking about me almost obsessively.

At one point she had even made custom stickers of me.

She also had secretly taken photos of me in public without my knowledge.

I started wondering... How many times did that happen without me realizing? How many pictures of me existed that I never even knew were taken? The weirdest realization wasn't that she hated me. It was that she never seemed to stop thinking about me.

By that point, I had almost forgotten she existed.

Meanwhile...

She had apparently spent years continuing conversations about me.

Making jokes.

Sending pictures.

Insulting me.

Creating stickers.

Talking about me to new friends.

I wasn't the one holding onto the past.

She was.

And honestly... I think that's what disturbed me the most.

...

At that point, I honestly didn't know what to feel anymore.

Angry? Confused? Hurt? Relieved? Bro...

It was like someone had handed me the missing pieces of a puzzle I'd been trying to solve for years. Suddenly, so many moments from school started making sense.

The weird looks. The whispering. The inside jokes that stopped the second I walked over.The times I felt like I was being laughed at without knowing why.

For years I had convinced myself that I was just insecure. That I was overthinking. That maybe my anxiety was making me imagine things that weren't actually happening.

Turns out...

I wasn't imagining nearly as much as I thought I was.

One thing Luisa said has honestly stayed with me ever since. She admitted that she believed almost everything Mold had told her about me. Not because she personally hated me. Not because I had done something to her. Simply because Mold was her best friend. And why would you assume your best friend is lying? You wouldn't.

She told me she felt guilty for never questioning it. She said she had been incredibly naive. And honestly...I don't even blame her that much anymore. When you trust someone completely, it's easy to adopt their opinions without realizing it. Especially when you're young.

BUT HOLD ON!!!! The story somehow got EVEN WORSE!

Because what eventually happened between Luisa and Mold explained everything.

i think towards the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026, Luisa developed a crush on a guy from her school. Like a genuine crush. The kind where your friends are the first people you tell because you're excited. Naturally, she told Mold all about him.

She showed her pictures.

Talked about him.

Confided in her.

Exactly what most best friends do.

Then something strange happened. Mold started messaging him. At first, Luisa didn't think much of it. Maybe they were just talking. Maybe it was innocent.

But the conversations became more frequent.

More personal. More obvious.

Eventually Luisa asked her if she could please stop. Not because she wanted to control who Mold talked to.But because she knew how she felt. She trusted her best friend to respect that.

Apparently... that was too much to ask.

Around that time, they ended up having a huge argument. Not only because of the guy. There were apparently lies. Broken trust. Other things that had been building up for a long time.

Eventually they stopped being friends.

Months later...

They reconciled. Or at least they tried to.

Then Luisa found out something that completely destroyed whatever trust she still had left. While they hadn't been speaking... Mold had secretly started DATING the exact guy Luisa had cried to her about. The same crush. The same guy. The one she had specifically asked her NOT to pursue.

I remember listening to that voice message. Luisa was crying.

She kept saying,

"I was so stupid."

"I believed everything she told me."

"Why didn't I see it sooner?"

And honestly... Listening to her felt weird. Because I recognized those feelings. I had asked myself those exact same questions years earlier.

Why didn't I notice?

Why did I keep giving chances?

Why did I keep believing that things would eventually get better?

The difference was that now... It wasn't happening to me anymore. It was happening to someone else. Someone who had once unknowingly participated in making my life miserable.

And somehow... I didn't even feel satisfied. I just felt sad. Because nobody deserves a friendship like that.

Not me.

Not Luisa.

Not anyone.

After hearing everything...

Reading the screenshots...

Seeing years of conversations that I was never supposed to see...

I quietly removed Mold from everything. Again. This time, though, it felt different. The first time we stopped talking, I wondered whether I had done something wrong. The second time, I wondered whether we had simply grown apart.

This time...

There were no questions left. Just closure.

The funny thing is that people sometimes ask whether I regret being friends with her.

Honestly?

No.

As weird as that sounds.

Because without those experiences, I probably wouldn't appreciate the people I have now nearly as much.My current friends don't secretly compete with me. They don't try to convince me that my feelings aren't real. They don't gossip about me the second I leave the room. They celebrate my achievements. They support me. They tell me when I'm wrong without making me feel worthless. That's what friendship is supposed to feel like.

Looking back, I also realized something else.

For years I thought this story was about me. I thought I somehow caused all of it. That I wasn't enough. Pretty enough. Funny enough. Interesting enough.

Now I don't think that's true anymore. I think Mold simply needed someone to be beneath her. Someone she could compare herself to. Someone she could talk about whenever she felt insecure. The moment I stopped playing that role, whether she realized it or not, she found someone else.

First me.

Then the girl she replaced me with.

Then Luisa.

Maybe there were others too.

I'll probably never know. But I don't care anymore.

One of the strangest realizations I've had is this:

While I spent years trying to forget that period of my life... she spent years making sure she never forgot me. That's not something I envy. That's actually incredibly sad. Because while she was busy talking about me, I was busy building a life that no longer included her.

A new school.

A new job.

New friends.

A healthier mindset.

People who actually love me.

PEACE. FINALLY. AFTER ALL THESE YEARS.

That's something no amount of gossip can take away.

If someone had told thirteen year old me that one day I'd look back at all of this without crying, I never would've believed them. Back then, I thought those friendships defined my life. Now they're just stories. Stories that taught me something important.

Trust your instincts. Pay attention to patterns, not promises. Someone who constantly talks badly about every former friend will eventually make you the next story.

And finally... never let someone convince you that you're "too sensitive" just because they benefit from you doubting yourself. 

Sometimes your intuition isn't anxiety. Sometimes it's the only person trying to protect you.

If you've read this entire thing... THANK YOU!

YES I know it was long, longer than I originally planned. But I think some stories deserve to be told completely.